Elbow room: The varieties of free will worth wanting

388

Book reviews

no guidance as to how to bring about this social change . Meanwhile, there is no possible way that people will assign equal value to plants, clams and humans as they all struggle for life sustenance . Egalitarian biocentrism, if followed strictly, would sometimes lead to sacrifice of humans in order to serve the inherent worth of wild creatures . Taylor evades confronting this problem . He even suggests that it might be justified for humans to sacrifice wild creatures in order to attain or protect a `high level of civilized life' (p . 281), but we should be sure that our actions result in the least wrong being done to the natural world (p . 283) . In effect, he concedes that he cannot strictly maintain his position . Taylor denies that his system breaks down when it comes to conflicts between humans and other species (p . 306), but he certainly demands more of humans than they can possibly deliver . Chapter 5, which asks, `Do animals and plants have rights?', is his weakest . After a torturously elaborate discussion, he first concludes that plants and animals cannot bear moral rights . He then concludes, by another route, that we could meaningfully say they have them (p . 254) . But then he recommends that we drop the language of rights for them because it would be misleading . One can only conclude that he only took up the subject because he anticipated that some other philosopher would attack him for not dealing with it . There is much good thinking in this book . His purpose was to provide us with an ideal imaginative picture that would enable us to respect both persons and nature, leading to `a world order on our planet where human civilization is brought into harmony with nature' (p . 308) . The goal is laudable, but it is very doubtful that most people will derive much guidance in how to get there .

References Attfield, R . (1983) . The Ethics of Environmental Concern . Oxford : Basil Blackwell . Goodpaster, K . (1978) . J. Phil . 75, 303-325 . Leopold, A . (1949) . A Sand County Almanac . Oxford : Oxford University Press . Wenz, P . (1988) . Environmental Justice . Albany, New York : SUNY Press . Lester W . Milbrath Research Program in Environment and Society, SUNY/Bufalo 14260, USA Elbow Room : The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting . By Daniel C . Dennett . Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England : MIT Press, 1984 . 200 pp . With Elbow Room, based on his John Locke lectures at Oxford in 1983, Daniel Dennett has again produced a fine piece of philosophy that is a pleasure to read . He is sensitive to science, offers very well crafted arguments and keeps things lively with analogies and examples . The audience for this work should be wide . Dennett argues that the problem of free will is a complex of fears and desires as well as a metaphysical issue . The first task of Elbow Room is therapeutic . He enjoins : `Please don't feed the bugbears', this is the first chapter title . The bugbears are the images which give the issue of free will its psychological force . In the spirit of Gilbert Ryle, Dennett gives convincing illustrations of the tendency that we have to confuse determinism with a fatalism that presupposes various kinds of manipulative agents lurking behind the flow of actually mindless natural events . Where Ryle uncovered the myth of the `ghost in the machine', Dennett successfully uncovers ghosts in many other arguments .



Book reviews

389

In traditional metaphysical terms, Dennett presents a compatibalist thesis . He concludes that we can have free will and science too . To begin to rough out the entire issue, Dennett takes up the largely neglected `intuition pumps' that fuel our uneasiness at the thought of determinism . Intuition pumps, Dennett argues, are an important part of philosophy . They are the stories and examples that fire the imagination ; Plato's allegory of the cave is one example . An example for us concerns, `One of the most powerful undercurrents in the free will literature . . . fear of sphexishness' (p . 11) . This fear is that in relevant ways we are like the digger wasp (Sphex ichneumoneus) who, although fascinatingly complex in her behaviour, is unmasked to be . . at the mercy of brute physical causation, driven inexorably into her states and activities by features of the environment outside her control' (p . 11) . Dennett does not hesitate to admit that some of us all of the time and all of us to some extent are sphexish, but he undertakes to show important ways we are not . In Chapter 2, `Making reasons practical', Dennett offers arguments concerning the relation between our biology and rationality . Here, he suggests the extent of our similarity with Sphex . Dennett sketches a necessarily incomplete but plausible story (a `just so story') of how our good but less-than-perfect ability at reasoning emerged in an evolutionary context . `In the beginning, there were no reasons ; there were only causes . Nothing had a purpose, nothing had so much as a function ; there was no teleology in the world at all' (p . 21) . Teleology comes with beings that have interests : initially with beings that have interests but do not know it and finally with creatures like ourselves who have interests and are conscious of it . The functions of language and dialogue with oneself are discussed so as to show how these abilities give us our practical (and theoretical) reason . Chapter 3 is devoted to a discussion of the ideas of control and self-control . These topics are too often neglected, according to Dennett, and he sketches a very plausible account of how a being might come to have self-control without being self-caused absolutely . This is, of course, important because one thing we fear about determinism is that if determinism is true this means that . . . all one's deeds are determined by events in the distant past over which one certainly has no control, so one never really controls any of one's deeds, one is controlled by the past or current events caused by events in the past and beyond one's control (p . 50) . Dennett argues that we are indeed linked causally to the past and to the present environment but that this supports rather than undermines the possibility of self-control . An indeterministic universe would certainly put us in no better position with respect to control than a deterministic one . Further, we need only think of a deterministic universe as providing us with more or fewer acceptable options at any given time . What we generally prefer are more rather than fewer options . What we want, according to Dennett is ` . . . lots of elbow room' (p . 63) . There will be a lot of discussion of Dennett's explication of self-control . He manages to argue for the importance of some disorder in life as well as spontaneity . What more could you want than rational self-control and spontaneity? People do, apparently, have some of each . Dennett gives a nice philosophical explanation of this . In the remaining chapters of Elbow Room, Dennett approaches the more traditional formulations of the free will issue . The idea of being an agent is explored . The Kantian idea of acting under the idea of freedom is analysed . The notion of `could have done otherwise' is discussed. And, finally, the question of what kind of free will we want is answered .



390

Book reviews

How could a deterministic process of `character transformation' beginning with a being that was not responsible for any of its 'decisions' ever yield a being who was not only responsible for its decisions, but responsible for having the sort of character that would make those decisions? (p . 85) . It has been thought by many that you simply cannot get a positive answer to this question . Dennett answers that we are agents because of our abilities for higher-order reasoning and higher-order desires, like the desire to not have the desire to smoke . Further, the ability to reflect on values and implement strategies for self-improvement is argued to constitute agenthood . But, even granting we have these abilities, the skeptic can still retort that being the kind of human that can do these things is itself a matter out of one's control . Maybe some people are just lucky? Dennett's analysis of luck should draw a lot of attention . The tendency we have to think of chance occurrence as happening as a result of Chance is clearly feeding a myth by treating probabilities as causes . Chance is not a force in the universe . And so to think of yourself as having been smiled upon (or condemned) by Chance is seriously misleading . But, unfortunately, initial and other external conditions are crucial for our ultimate status as moral agents . Dennett does admit this but tries to minimize the impact of this point on his argument . For example, if we think of life as like a marathon rather than a short race, initial advantages even out in the end . The use of this particular metaphor brings to mind Lyndon Johnson's quite different use of the foot race analogy to support affirmative action policy in the sixties . How far Dennett intends to suggest political conclusions is not clear, but where his work can be seen to have implications for social policy he is likely to evoke criticism . His optimism concerning our condition as responsible agents is refreshing and his own summary of this section worth quoting at length : The fear that this chapter has focused on is the fear that no naturalistic theory of the self could be given that sufficiently distinguished it from a mere domino in a chain . We do not want to be mere dominoes : we want to be moral agents . Let us review what has been found to be special about naturalistically conceived selves . Only some of the portions of the universe have the property of being designed to resist their own dissolution, to wage a local campaign against the inexorable trend of the Second Law of Thermodynamics . And only some of these portions have the further property of being caused to have reliable expectations about what will happen next, and hence to have the capacity to control things, including themselves . And only some of these have the further capacity of significant self-improvement (through learning) . And fewer still have the open-ended capacity (requiring a language of self-description) for 'radical self-evaluation' . These portions of the world are thus loci of self-control, of talent, of decision making . They have projects, interests, and values they create in the course of their own self-evaluation and self-definition . How much less like a domino could a portion of the physical world be? The remaining chapters fill out the view developed thus far . Here, there is space to mention just a few of the important conclusions . We are deliberators ; we do act under the idea of freedom . We presume our freedom, and this fact would be quite paradoxical if it were not real in some sense . Dennett effectively argues that it is rational to ` . . . act as if the world really does have an open future, with real opportunities' (p . 115) . He further argues that the notion of opportunity is not an empty illusion . Although many philosophers would have begun an analysis of `free will' with a discussion of the locution `could have done otherwise', Dennett has left this until almost last . Technically, this is the most difficult section of the book but very rewarding . Suppose that our assignments of responsibility depended upon an answer to the question, . . . of whether we ever could do otherwise than we in fact do in exactly those circumstances, we would be faced with a most peculiar problem of ignorance : It would be unlikely in the extreme, given what now seems to be the case in physics, that anyone would ever know whether anyone has ever been responsible (p . 135) .



Book reviews

39 1

This is a result only a philosopher could take comfort in, Dennett remarks (p . 136) . Fortunately, when we do ask ourselves questions involving `can', we are interested in things we can know something about . We can wonder, fruitfully, about questions of disposition and character (p. 142) . Dennett's discussion of `possibility' is too brief but quite necessary . The idea of opportunity, mentioned earlier, and our normal idea that our future is open require more for their foundation than logical possibility . Physical possibility (the idea that something is consistent with the laws of nature) is required, but this is not enough . 'Epistemic possibility' holds out promise. Dennett tries to show a sense in which something being possible for all you know is real possibility (pp . 151-152) . The world may be determined but a certain kind of ignorance keeps our future open for us . We should not be too quick to reject this epistemic solution even if it needs more work (p . 152) . I will close with one of Dennett's summary claims : What we want when we want free will is the power to decide our courses of action, and to decide them wisely, in the light of our expectations and desires . We want to be in control of ourselves, and not under the control of others . We want to be agents, capable of initiating, and taking responsibility for, projects and deeds . All this is ours, I have tried to show, as a natural product of our biological endowment, extended and enhanced by our initiation into society (p . 169) . William Dibrell

Department of Philosophy, Alfred University, Alfred, New York 14802, USA The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. By John D . Barrow and Frank J . Tipler . New York : Oxford University Press, 1986 . xxii + 706 pp . $29 .95 . The basic significance for the general reader of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle is to be found in the contrast of knowledge that is made available, as between the cosmos and the human . In the final section (10 .6) of the book, it is stated that, The essence of a human being is not the body but the program which controls the body ; we might even identify the program which controls the body with the religious notion of a soul, for both are defined to be non-material entities which are the essence of a human personality . It is later said that, . . . a human being is a program designed to run on very special hardware, and most of the subprograms of the human program are present only because of the peculiar structure of the hardware . These properties are most unlikely to be present in non-human intelligent programs (p . 659) . The `peculiar structure' of the hardware of the human is not brought under review in the book . A good reason exists for this neglect . A generally acceptable scientific interpretation of the origin of the human has not been established . It would appear that such a solution depends upon an understanding of energy relationships which are not available to the mathematical mode of conveying information . The fundamental difficulty concerns the nature of `memory' . It can be shown that memory systems are the result of singular energy constellations . It is the exploration of this area of experience that leads to the conclusion that there are three such energy systems : cosmic, metabolic and human . This book presents an outstanding review of the cosmic energy system . In a foreword, John A . Wheeler of the Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of Texas comments that, `In Chapter 6 the authors provide one of the best short reviews of cosmology ever published' . Chapter 8, which discusses `The anthropic principle and